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Vol. 62, no. 2 (Summer 2020)

Contents

Abstracts

Converging Tonosyntactic Supercategories: Crossing the Noun-Verb Barrier in Jamsay

Jeffrey Heath
University of Michigan

Abstract. Dogon NPs divide modifiers into two opposing supercategories defined by convergent semantic and tonosyntactic properties. Dogon verbs undergo various tonal overlays controlled by tense-aspect-mood-polarity suffixes. One Dogon language, Jamsay, similarly systematized tonal patterns in verbal inflection. The tonosyntactically active elements are reference restrictors in NPs and negative suffixes in verbs; these combine to constitute a language-specific "superdupercategory," for which a set-theoretic semantics is proposed. "Super-dupercategories" appear also in the neighboring isolate Bangime and parallels to the diachrony of supercategories in Wubuy (Australia). Binary supercategories are simultaneously systematic and language-specific, hence cultural, but index or affect nothing outside of language. They fit into no contemporary theory of language, but recall early and mid-twentieth century ideas about the enchantment of formal patterns.

Subject Indicators and the Decipherment of Genre on Andean Khipus

Sabine Hyland
University of St. Andrews

Abstract. This article analyzes how khipus, Andean knotted cords for communication, indicated their subject matter. Spanish chroniclers attested to the existence of different genres of khipus; however, scholars have not known how or if khipus indicated the genre of data they stored. Ethnographic testimony reveals that needlework bundles—kaytes—attached to primary cords served as subject indicators. This article surveys post-Inka kaytes, examining one from colonial Huarochirí through an interdisciplinary methodology that provides a model for kayte interpretation. This new evidence about subject indicators supports the hypothesis that khipus encoded information through hierarchical levels of significance, and furthers decipherment.

"I Don’t Want Them to Be like Me": Discourses of Inferiority and Language Shift in Upper Necaxa Totonac

Yvonne Lam
University of Alberta

Abstract. This study examines the language ideologies behind the shift away from the use of Upper Necaxa Totonac, an indigenous language of Mexico. Five themes characterize the discourses of the first generation of parents who socialized their children to use Spanish, the majority language, as the everyday language of communication: preoccupation with their children’s future, an unfavorable view of indigenous identity, the association of the past with suffering, concern about their children’s proficiency in Spanish, and the inability to force children to learn the indigenous language. These discourses reveal an ideology that views being indigenous as inferior, leading parents to eschew the transmission of their language

Old Records of Three Contiguous Pacific Northwest Languages: Bella Coola, Carrier, Shuswap

Hank Nater
Conklin, Alberta

Abstract. I examine language samples recorded by the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie, who established contact with local people in the Shuswap–Carrier–Bella Coola macroregion in 1793. The first short word list he presents affords proof of drag chain sound shifts in Carrier and lexical changes in a northwestern Shuswap dialect, and the second one illustrates the shift of *...an# to ...a# in Bella Coola. Together with Mackenzie's data, Daniel Harmon's 1820 Carrier word list provides a time line for completion of certain sound shifts in Carrier. Additionally, the Shuswap dialect observed by Mackenzie clearly differed from current Shuswap dialects on the lexical level.

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